Love, Lindsey - May 28th 2025

What I’m Loving

Because there’s nothing I love more than hopping aboard a bandwagon, this week’s newsletter is dedicated to water bottles. I don’t know about you but I grew up in the north of England in the 80s and 90s where tap water was the only h2o option and was frequently referred to as “council pop”. Ouch. Top tier beverages were brand name varieties of pop, Pepsi, being the drug of choice in my house, followed by Ribena - hot if you’re poorly, fizzy if you’re feeling wild, lemonade (we were a Cresta family because it had polar bears on the label), then squash, usually orange but occasionally we went wild and got Tropical, and bringing up the rear, my brother’s favourite, Rose’s Lime Cordial. Look, I can’t explain the choices he made, OK? I should also mention my nana had a preference for whatever The Pop Man was slinging but I can’t really think about that because it really brings home the fact I grew up in The Past because The Pop Man was just that, a man in a van who delivered bottles of Jones’ generic pop every week, lemonade and dandelion and burdock* for my grandparents, but there was a selection available.

At some point in the early 2000s, I discovered human beings were supposed to drink water to live and not only when they’re hungover, even though there was a direct correlation between the way I was living at the time and said discovery. That was the beginning. A liter bottle of Evian (or whatever was on offer at Superdrug) hated to see me coming. Because you still couldn’t drink tap water, could you? Had to be mineral water. Had to come in a plastic bottle. Had to be more expensive than the average bus fare.

Fast forward to 2025 and I now live in a desert climate (because north east LA is pretty much in the desert) and I am slipping speedily into decrepitude meaning the more water I can get into my body the better. Headaches? More water. Shit skin? More water. Not sleeping well? More water. Impending apocalypse? Water won’t help but it can’t hurt. The only thing is, you can’t drink from a plastic bottle anymore which means you simply must acquire a collection of reusable water bottles. Even though you only need one. Yes, just like reusable shopping bags before them, reusable water bottles are here to save the day, slaughter your wallet and probably end up causing more trouble than they solve bcause we are capitalist hoarders but also we love the environment or something. It doesn’t make sense but don’t worry about it.

As a complete mug who suffers from terminal FOMO, I think I’ve tried pretty much all the big hitters in the water bottle sector, either purchasing them myself or receiving them in PR and as such, I do consider myself something of an expert even if my opinions might un petit peu controversial. For example, I fucking hate a Stanley cup. For starters, you have to keep them upright all the time or the spill which to me defies the point of having a reusable water bottle, they’re too expensive and they’re TOO BIG. There, I said it. Stanley cups are simply too big. You do not need to carry that much water around with you in what is ultimately nothing more than a massive mug unless you’re using it as a stabilizing core and tricep workout. Are they cute? Sometimes! But if I can’t throw it in my bag without a risk of the bloody thing spilling everywhere, I don’t want it. Also, I’m sure you’ve heard all the stories of people not cleaning the straws properly and getting waterborne diseases and honestly, things are shitty enough out here, I’m not looking to pick up a wee case of cholera.

Water bottles with straws are, in general, not my bag. I don’t like to suck (lol), I like to swig but I also don’t want to have to unscrew a lid which cuts a lot of popular bottles out my list. Hydroflask was my choice for a long time but their proprietary flip-top lid leaks after a while and the mouth opening wasn’t large enough for my liking. All of this brings us to my new bestie, the Owala Free Sip. It’s pretty! It has a locking lid! You can use a straw or swig from a large mouth opening! They’re also not the most expensive bottle on the market, they keep your liquids hot or cold for a decent amount of time, you can choose from heaps of different colour-ways and they’re frequently on sale. Also the matte texture is chef’s kiss for adding stickers and pretending you’re Gen Z. The only flaw in this bad boy as far as I’m concerned is the wide base that doesn’t fit in the cup holder in my car but fuck it, the thing never leaks** so I can toss it on the passenger seat and grab as needed.

*because this is a section called What I’m Loving, I will not dwell on this monstrosity but I find it very difficult to take people seriously when they claim they’ve suffered then I find out they never took a big old swig of pop believing it to be Coca-Cola only to find out it’s Dandelion and Burdock. Bonus points if that happened to you in a Ford Dealership in the early eighties while your parents were halfway through the paperwork for their first ever brand new car, a beautiful maroon Escort Sunset. Unrelated, can someone please tell me why I can still remember that car’s license place number even though I can’t recall why I went into the kitchen two minutes ago?

**the only time my bottle has leaked was when it was in the side pocket of my backpack on a flight to Savannah and a man in January 6th sunglasses, who spent the entire flight watching IG stories on his iPad, being served ads for protein powder and commenting on posts of catfishing women in bikinis, insisted on taking my backpack out my hands without asking and putting it in the overhead locker for me even though I already had it halfway there myself (it was a small plane, a small backpack and I am far from weak). Because he wasn’t paying attention, he seemingly jammed the bag into the locker and undid the catch on my bottle which led it to leak everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean all over his belongings because my backpack was waterproof. Just in case you were worrying that Karma isn’t still on our side…

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